1. Field of The Invention
This invention relates to chew and play toys for domestic pet animals. More particularly, it relates to a treat container for domestic pets, such as dogs and cats, which can be actuated during play by a pet to release a predetermined item contained in the toy such as animal food, a treat, or an odor-emitting substance.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many domestic pets, such as dogs and cats, like to play with toys by chewing, pulling and pushing them, or moving them around with their nose, teeth, and front legs. This behavior is natural to animals, and keeps the animals active and develops their motor coordination. Also, if there are not any toys available for the animal, damage to items surrounding the pet can occur. For example, domestic pets can damage the furniture, carpeting, walls, and shoes.
The prior art reveals a variety of toys intended for animals. Some examples of the chew and play toys available for animals are rawhide chews or bones, cloth pulls and ropes, as well as various vinyl, plastic, rubber and latex toys. In this application, any toy that an animal can chew or play with is called a chew and play toy.
Some available chew and play toys are the various tug-of-war toys such as cloth ropes and rubber pulls in O'Rourke's U.S. Pat. No. 5,092,272; U.S. Pat. No. Des. 329,310 and U.S. Pat. No. Des. 328,805. There are toys manufactured from vinyl or a hard nylon polymer in various shapes and sizes, such as Axelrod's U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,436 and Scrani's U.S. Pat. No. Des. 350,629. Also, there are various cat toys based on an endless track and a ball, such as Graves' U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,650. The problem with these chew and play boys is that they contain no treat, flavor, or scent which is releasable as a result of biting the toy and an animal will lose interest to these toys rather quickly.
If an attractive odor or flavor is added to the chew and play toy, the toy generally is more attractive to an animal. There are inventions that show chew and play toys with added odor or flavor, such as shown in Allis' U.S. Pat. No. 1,149,170, Axelrod's U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,871,334 and 5,339,771, and Edwards' U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,513,014 and 4,557,219. A problem with these inventions is that only one flavor can be impregnated into the toy item and they do not release a predetermined item as a result of biting the toy.
Some inventions show devices that allow animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance to be placed in a container in the chew and play toy, called a treat container. These toys are more activating and stimulating for an animal, since the animal tries to gain access to the animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance in the toy. Typically, the animal has to perform a simple task, or solve a problem to gain access to the animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance in the toy. In general, animals tend to play longer with toys that require a simple task to be performed than with toys that do not require a task to be performed in order to operate the toy, and do not contain any animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances.
For example, chew and play toys containing animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances are shown in Chill's U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,142, Van Natter III et al's U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,570, Houghton et al's U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,828, and Jorgensen's International Patent Cooperation Treaty application PCT/DK95/00257. Also, some generally available chew and play toys allow animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance to be placed in them, such as the Kong Inc.'s Kong toys shown on page 63 in R. C. Steele Wholesale Pet and Animal Care Supplies catalog, Summer Preview 1997 edition.
All these toys, however, have specific and similar problems. Chill's U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,142; and the Kong Inc.'s Kong toys can contain animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance mainly in paste form, limiting the available selection of animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances, and making the toys harder to refill and clean than when using solid animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances. In both of these toys, it would be difficult to make any solid animal food, treat, or odor-producing substance stay in the toy.
Van Natter III et al's U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,570, can contain solid and paste form animal food, or treat, or odor-producing substance, but it does not allow the animal to access the substance in the container without help from a person. Therefore, it offers no challenging problem to be solved by the animal. Also, the animal cannot play with this toy independently without help from a person.
Houghton et al's U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,828, and Jorgensen's International Patent Cooperation Treat application PCT/DK95/00257, offer a problem to be solved to the animal, but they are mainly limited to solid animal food, treats, or odor-producing particles having quite narrow size and shape limitations because of the open holes in these toys. If the animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances used in these toys have particle sizes too small, the particles can fall out too easily, and if the particle sizes are too large, the animal cannot extract them without chewing the particles in the toy to make the particles smaller. In addition, the problem solving skills of the animal do not necessarily affect how quickly the animal can gain access to the animal food, treat, or odor-producing substances inside the toy. This can be frustrating to the animal. Usability of these toys can also cause problems. Houghton et al's U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,828 involves a locking mechanism, which makes the refilling of the toy complicated. In Jorgensen's International Patent Cooperation Treaty application PCT/DK95/00257, the cleaning of the toy can be a problem, since the toy does not offer a good access to the interior of the toy. Also, both of these toys need to be made of a rather stiff material, such as hard plastic, in order to be practical to manufacture, and to function properly. This can cause quite disturbing noise when an animal plays with these toys by rolling them on the floor. In addition, both of these toys are hard to modify to be used as component treat containers embedded in other toys in the market.
The present invention overcomes the problems of the prior art and, in addition, provides a new concept in an interactive pet toy which provides an extraction problem to the pet in figuring out how to extract the treat from the toy while simultaneously providing an incentive to the animal by providing a sound and scent attractant to the animal to induce it to continue playing with the toy until it extracts the treat and silences the sound.